Sharon Pelletier writes on her experience among chivalrous men. I used to be chivalrous. Perhaps I still am, but I feel like it anymore. Maybe my light is dimming. Maybe when the dragons you fight are within you, that feeling of chivalry gets lost.

I am told the Congressman John Conyers, seen in this video, has argued in the past that congressman should read the bills they are passing. Through the link, you’ll see him making fun of that idea.

Voting on legislation you have not read is completely immoral! I can understand partial readings and using summaries in part, but more than once congressmen have been surprised by the bills they voted into law, and that must stop. Throw them out, if they can’t keep up with things on Capitol Hill, and for the leaders in both parties who encourage herd mentalities with our congressmen, throw them out too or raise the noise make them slow down to represent us, not their party or lobbyists or any special interests other than us.

If you don’t think spelling matters, you’d still better watch it when you’re programming your GPS. This couple in Italy misspelled “Capri” and ended up driving 400 miles in the wrong direction.

The Editor at Large for Merriam-Webster, Peter Sokolowski, is tweeting on word searches. He notes there have been many requests for the definition of “stupidly,” due to President Obama’s press conference last week. Do the citizens of the Interweb not know what “stupidly” means? Looking up “nefarious” I can understand and “avuncular” got a boost from talk on W. Cronkite, but “stupidly”?

Are you up to speed on the flap over Professor Henry Louis Gates’ arrest for disorderly behavior and complaints of racism: I don’t blame you if you aren’t, but I found this bit of the story too fascinating to pass up. The WSJ observes:

Gates, however, has managed to get tripped up by his own prejudices. Another Gates quote we noted yesterday was this: “If [Crowley] apologizes sincerely, I am willing to forgive him. And if he admits his error, I am willing to educate him about the history of racism in America and the issue of racial profiling. . . . That’s what I do for a living.”

As it turns out, that’s what Crowley does for a living. The Boston Herald explains: Crowley . . . has taught a racial profiling class at the Lowell Police Academy for five years. His academy class, which he teaches with a black police officer, instructs about 60 police cadets per year . . .

Thanks for the nice–nay, flattering–review, Phil. It was so encouraging that I celebrated by making myself a turkey sandwich with two (2) slices of turkey on it for supper.

In the house where I grew up, that qualified as extravagance.



S. T. Karnick, over at his The American Culture blog, reviews the movie “Public Enemies,” and finds it wanting. I think I’ll give that one a pass. (And I don’t care what anybody says. There’s no resemblance whatever between Johnny Depp and John Dillinger.)



Dr. Gene Edward Veith, at Cranach, links to a post by Matthew Kratz at Sola Fide, in which he shares some information from Mark Noll’s book, The New Shape of World Christianity. Dr. Veith himself notes:

In my own tradition, there are lots more Lutherans in Africa (12 million) than there are in America (9 million). The Lutheran church in Madagascar (3.5 million) is bigger than the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (2.5 million).

Madagascar was a chief traditional field of Norwegian Lutherans. Not only Norwegians from the homeland, but young Norwegian-American pioneer churches, spent years and tears and blood in that country. I know several people who grew up in missionary homes there.

“And the dagger is to defend yourself at great need. For you also are not to be in the battle.”

“Why, sir? I think–I don’t know–but I think I could be brave enough.”

“That is not the point. But battles are ugly when women fight.”

Of course, the dialogue is from Narnia, but I don’t know what this public doman image is meant to represent. Do you know if this is meant to show a specific woman in a story or battle?

Bret Stephens:

It’s a safe bet that 100 years from now most half-way educated people will know about Neil Armstrong. It’s also a safe bet that in a century the name Michael Jackson will be familiar only to five or six cultural anthropologists and, possibly, a medical historian. So what does it say about the United States in 2009 that the late moon-walker is a household name but the living one is not? . . . much of what made the Apollo missions such a tribute to America was the character of the astronauts: their clipped exchanges between Houston and the spacemen; or Lovell, Anders and Borman reading from Genesis on Apollo 8; or the unflappable Flight Director Gene Kranz working the problems of Apollo 13 to triumph.

He contrasts these thoughts with what is promoted in celebrity culture. (HT: Big Hollywood)

Sol Stern writes about teachers in New York and seven practical ways school administrators and teachers unions can educate their students better.

I first discovered how teachers’ contracts can undermine excellence when my two children attended P.S. 87, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, in the 1990s. After dropping the kids off one morning, I noticed a disheveled, middle-aged man shuffling aimlessly around the schoolyard as the children waited for their teachers to bring them inside. He seemed in a stupor; I worried that a homeless person had wandered onto the school grounds. When I pointed him out to a fellow parent, she giggled and explained that he was a new teacher.

That can’t be true, I thought, and went off to see the principal, who briefed me about the seniority transfer clause in the teachers’ contract. Among all the applicants for a posted vacancy at P.S. 87, our obviously impaired new teacher had the most years in the system, so he automatically got the job. The teacher’s former principal, wanting to get rid of him, gave him a satisfactory rating and encouraged him to change schools—a practice known as “passing on the lemons.” P.S. 87’s principal didn’t even have the right to interview the transfer teacher before he showed up for the first day of school.

How were the stones at Stonehenge transported and set up? A construction worker thinks he knows how. (Thanks to Uncle Orvis for the link.)

Steve Carper, in the Writer’s Bloc column of this month’s Bulletin of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, quotes The New York Times, quoting Richard Dawkins, who has a low opinion of fantasy:

Dawkins said, “I would like to know whether there’s any evidence that bringing children up to believe in spells and wizards and magic things turning into other things—it is unscientific, I think it is anti-scientific. Whether that has a pernicious effect, I don’t know.”

His book for children is to explore children’s relationships with fairy tales and to encourage them to think about the world scientifically rather than mythologically.

Atheists keep telling us that they live full and meaningful lives without God, but they keep coming up with sterile nonsense like this. And then they wonder why we’re repelled by their arguments.



“I am proud to announce that I have proven shoes unnecessary!” said the scientist, after cutting off both his feet.